Is it gun shops, gun shows or government that is ‘chief source of weapons?'

March 11th, 2011 12:12 pm PT

Following yesterday’s announcement of an 84-count federal indictment against 11 people including the mayor and police chief of a famous New Mexico community for gun trafficking, gun rights activists from Seattle to San Antonio are wondering who is the greater threat to homeland security: armed private citizens or avaricious public servants?

Question: Had those firearms transactions occurred at, say, the Puyallup gun show (which deals swiftly with people who violate the rules, as this column noted here) http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-s ... p-gun-show and not involved public officials or an Obama administration agency, would that be a front page headline story, above the fold, in every newspaper in the country? While American gun shows, conducted by organizations like the Washington Arms Collectors, are almost invariably smeared as the source of guns for criminals, the Evergreen State’s contribution to Mexican violence over the past several years (detailed here by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns) http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org ... o_2010.pdf has declined, apparently to the chagrin of the Seattle Weekly, which has reported: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailywee ... g_used.php

In 2008, 129 recovered guns (up from the previous year's tally of 97) submitted to the the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) were found to have origins in Washington, putting the Evergreen state ahead of Nevada and Oklahoma, according to numbers compiled by MAIG. From 2006 to 2009, MAIG's Top 10 list is fairly consistent, with Texas leading the pack, followed closely by the rest of the border states. Washington leapfrogged into fifth place in 2007, then sank to the 8th spot in 2008 before dropping out of the Top 10 altogether in 2009.

Washington's raw total for that year isn't provided. But, controlling for population, MAIG has now determined that in 2009, the rate of "crime-guns" being trafficked out of Washington and recovered in Mexico fell below the national average. Unfortunately, MAIG's report doesn't say why. Nor does it go into detail on how those guns are getting to Mexico.—Seattle Weekly

Yesterday, a federal grand jury indicted Mayor Eddie Espinoza, Police Chief Angelo Vega, Trustee Blas Gutierrez, all of Columbus, NM, and eight others including Gutierrez’ wife, Eva on charges of gun trafficking. Court documents obtained by this column allege that approximately 200 firearms were purchased by the suspects over a 14-month period, running from January 2010 to this month, and that several of those firearms have been recovered by authorities in Mexico. Authorities in that country are "distancing themselves" from the growing scandal over gun trafficking, as reported by the McAllen, TX Monitor.

According to the Associated Press, authorities stopped at least 40 of those guns and confiscated more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition before they crossed the border. That leaves approximately 160 guns unaccounted for, except for the 12 guns already recovered by Mexican authorities.

The Mexican Attorney General’s Office — known as the PGR — has distanced itself from a recent

U.S. operation that allowed hundreds of guns to be purchased by gunrunners.—McAllen Monitor http://www.themonitor.com/news/general- ... orney.html

To keep this in perspective, that pales in comparison to perhaps 2,500 guns allegedly allowed to enter the illicit gun trade under the Project Gunrunner/Fast-and-Furious operation in Arizona, an operation that has become the center of a scandal now under investigation by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, which this column has discussed recently here, http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-s ... o-examiner

here http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-s ... er-scandal
here http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-s ... al-sort-of
and here http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-s ... er-scandal

Still, the press seems content to focus on the myth of “American guns flooding Mexicoâ€